Fear of RSS
Friday, July 2nd, 2004 by Mike Rundle
This week one of my favorite sites, Coudal, went through a redesign. Part of the thought process that went behind the redesign was whether they should include a RSS feed for their Fresh Signals section. Jim Coudal feared that if he included a RSS feed then people would either stop visiting his site or the content wouldn’t have the same feeling since it would viewed out of context. Both legitimate concerns.
However, whether or not to use RSS on your site should no longer be an option. I believe it has become a necessity if you wish to compete with others in your industry.
In the worst case scenario when using RSS a reader will never again visit your site. Since I am unable to track usage patterns for all RSS readers I don’t know how often this happens, but I can tell you from the statistics from my sites (including this one) the number of visitors goes up monthly even with full content RSS feeds. And even if they do not visit your site again, at least they are still reading your content. This increases the odds that they will link to you from their site or spread the word about your site.
It’s always nice for people to continuously return to your site and understanding the different reasons for them to return is essential to your site’s success. Before RSS, there were three main ways for readers to come back to your site.
- Link from another site or search engine
- Personal bookmark
- Email updates to your audience
For many users today, bookmarks have become useless since we have too many of them. Bookmarks allow for information overload just as easily as RSS does, but the difference is that RSS allows updates through all that information overload. A bookmark gets hidden, but if you update your site then the RSS feed will reflect that and tell the reader its time to view the content.
There are many sites that I keep track of and I will never remember them off the top of my head. I don’t remember all the sites in my RSS reader, but I don’t have to since it does all the remembering for me. With a site like Coudal, since I have not made it my homepage, I often forget to visit the site. Many times I go weeks without visiting, not because I don’t like their content, but because I simply forget about it. RSS wouldn’t allow me to forget it.
With the plethora of sites around fighting for the mindshare of your readers becomes essential. Why lessen your chances by not including a RSS feed? That opens the gates for everyone else to increase their readership. RSS feeds create more opportunities and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Reader Comments
11 Responses to “Fear of RSS”
Right on, Paul. And I really like that comparison, RSS is the new bookmark. And I think that’s how we should encourage its use, and also, that makes a great way of explaining what-the-heck RSS is to people who may not be web geeks.
July 3rd, 2004 at 9:42 am
RSS is even more than a simple bookmark to me. If a site has interesting content and a newsfeed, then it is almost certain that I subscribe it.
If the future content (of which I’m being informed via RSS) doesn’t fit me: okay, I unsubscribe. However, the decision to keep track with a site or not comes with the content. Content comes to me via Newsfeed.
It’s funny… sometimes I visit a site, like it and look for the XML (or RSS) button. If I can’t find it, I’m off after reading a bit around.
July 3rd, 2004 at 1:52 pm
It’s funny… sometimes I visit a site, like it and look for the XML (or RSS) button. If I can’t find it, I’m off after reading a bit around.
It’s funny because I do the exact same thing. There are just too many sites out there with a lot of them sharing the same content or linking to each other to try and bookmark them so we have to rely on RSS feeds. At that rate if we like the content we will be more inclined to visit the site later.
July 3rd, 2004 at 4:16 pm
3rd vote for abandoning sites without an RSS feed. I’d love to see statistics on this, I’m sure we represent a growing silent number of web surfers.
The Coudal story was a case of the web designers feeling that they were losing important control of the presentation of their content. They were, only for people that chose to use RSS. Their argument was moot (in my humble opinion) because you can’t put a genie like RSS back in the bottle.
July 5th, 2004 at 1:17 am
It’s very hard for designers to let go of the fact that RSS does not require their design. They understand the value of good design, but must also understand the value of giving your reader’s a choice as to how they view your content.
July 6th, 2004 at 1:08 pm
What about having summary RSS feeds where people have to come to your site to read the whole article? Or would the RSS fans rather have a full content feed?
July 6th, 2004 at 1:22 pm
Well that is the intermediate solution Jeff. Recently, Jeff Gruber has opened up full content feeds on his site, but only for the people who become members. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this trend being followed. However, we take the full content approach so as not to take any chances for busy people who need full content or they will continue to move on.
In most cases the best option would be to start with summary possibly and wait for or ask for feedback. In this case I don’t see the harm in letting the customers dictate the decision making process.
July 6th, 2004 at 2:06 pm
If I have a choice (which happens very seldom), I go for the full content feed. After all, I want RSS because I want the content. However, if the site is well-designed, I often go read the content in the surroundings the designer gave it. If I’m in a hurry maybe not, but I read the content and I love to read the full entry.
The RSS for the comments is a good example, as I want to read them completely. If I want to add my personal view, I click the link which leads me directly to the comment in question. I have time to read it again (and think again) at this time.
To sum this one up, I prefer full-content-RSS whereever available and, if the design is good, I go see the combination of content and presentation (which can be artwork).
July 6th, 2004 at 2:12 pm
I’ve had “If your site doesn’t RSS, I won’t visit twice” in my .signature for a while and I’m going to start pointing people to this post when people ask me about it.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth to go through a bunch of sites checking for updates all the time. I use my feed reader as an outboard brain, so I can drop a site I want to watch in there and I don’t have to figure out how often the site updates. If a site doesn’t allow me to do it, I’m probably not going to check back to see if they’re updated, I’ll have already forgotten about them.
July 10th, 2004 at 8:13 pm
So this RSS thing basically informs you when new content has been added to a bookmarked site? or am i completly off? :S
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Help Desk Software Consultant
July 30th, 2004 at 6:11 am
Almost. RSS is a way to condense any kind of frequently updated information into a standard XML format so that it can be used in any way you’d like. The advantages of this are (you’re right) having quick access to updates on your favorite sites.
Other advantages include moving content away from the medium for which it was written, out into the open world where you can do whatever you want with it. Reading CNN headlines from your PDA in Target. Emailing yourself the latest comment on your favorite technology weblog.
The coolest thing about RSS is that it lets you be in charge of the information and content you receive, and then let’s you be in charge of what you want to do with it. It’s all about moving information away from proprietary formats, and giving the user the power to do with it what they will.
Sorry this was long, I love RSS :)
July 30th, 2004 at 9:06 am
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